Published 2 years ago
by
Sandy Schaefer
, Updated March 21st, 2012 at 12:18 pm,

[UPDATE: The supposed DKR rough cut running time has been revealed as a hoax.]

The public’s Bat-mania has been in a state of remission for the past few months, allowing Christopher Nolan and his filmmaking crew some time to quietly commence with post-production duties on The Dark Knight Rises. It’s a sharp turnabout from the end of 2011, when the fervently anticipated blockbuster was making headlines on an almost daily basis, in part thanks to the unveiling of an ominous official poster, the IMAX premiere of the film’s prologue (complete with controversial sound mixing), and the release of a full-length trailer that is mostly just a glorified teaser.

A recently-released Dark Knight Rises plot synopsis shed a bit more light on the film’s storyline, while also (slowly) re-igniting the masses’ interest in seeing Christian Bale as Batman, facing off against the brutal tactics of animalistic terrorist Bane (Tom Hardy). Thanks to the announcement of the movie’s preliminary running time, we have an even better of just how much craziness will be going down in this flick.

Nolan reportedly screened a rough cut of The Dark Knight Rises for the head honchos over at Warner Bros. last week, which will afford the filmmaker plenty of time to incorporate any worthwhile feedback from his bosses and refine the final product as he sees fit. While the studio executives’ general response is being kept firmly under wraps for now, MTV has scooped up the following intriguing nugget of information.

“… ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is real and finished, presumably in the form of a four-hour rough cut. There’s no official word on the reaction to the [early studio] screening, as of yet.”

So, apparently Nolan’s early cut of Dark Knight Rises is massive, even in an age where blockbusters running upwards of 2.5-3 hours in length are frequently among the biggest box office hits of any year (see: Avatar, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, etc.). For comparative purposes, it should be pointed out that the running times for Nolan’s previous Batman movies are 140 minutes (Batman Begins) and 152 minutes (The Dark Knight).

UPDATE: As mentioned before (since this article was written) it’s now been clarified that the length of Nolan’s rough cut for TDKR is unknown – and that aspect of MTV‘s report was meant to be taken as a joke.

Dark Knight Rises also marks a break in tradition from its predecessors, due to its theatrical release date arriving after this year’s San Diego Comic-Con festivities take place. That’s lead to speculation that Nolan and certain members of the film’s cast could be putting in an unprecedented appearance at the event.

There’s a chance Nolan could appear at San Diego Comic-Con this year. It would be the first time ever for the director, since his previous two Batman movies debuted before the convention. This time around, Batman will rise the week after SDCC, so speculation has already begun that Nolan could make his final bow at the geekiest of all gatherings.

As much excitement as there undoubtedly is for Nolan and Co. to put in a Comic-Con appearance, the bigger news is that he and his editing team will be quite busy chopping Dark Knight Rises down to size over the next few months. Joss Whedon’s first cut of The Avengers was an hour shorter than Nolan’s TDKR rough cut, which puts into perspective the sheer amount of narrative ground to be covered (and action set pieces to be featured) in the Batman threequel.

The Dark Knight Rises features a cast which includes Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard, Morgan Freeman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Juno Temple, among several others. Suffice it to say, their respective on-screen counterparts look to get the fair share of screen time when the film hits regular and IMAX theaters around the U.S. on July 20th, 2012.

Personally, I don’t watch The Dark Knight over and over again because it is a longer movie. It’s a good movie don’t get me wrong but to invest around 3 hours while casually watching a movie is soimething I don’t do. Who has that much free time? One of the reasons why I don’t watch The Lord of the Rings movies over and over.

I agree. It’s a great film. But its run time does typically keeps it off the “I’m bored. What do I wanna watch?” list. It’s usually on the “I’m bored. Hey! The Dark Knight is on cable!” list along with The Shawshank Redmption.

Oh I have free time. Plenty of it. I will make time to watch my fave movies and even do movie marathons from time to time. Totally worth it. I watch these films not only for enjoyment but I can pull more out of them each time and really apprciate all aspects that went into the effort. I am willing to sit thru 3 hours of a movie esp if I paid $15 or more to see it. It has to be worth the time invested of course but so far I have not been let down with Nolan’s films and of course the LOTR series. The longer, the better as far as I am concerned.

what was nice is when you bought the blu ray it came with the digital coffee, so whenever i am in transit (planes, buses, metro, etc.) i can just skip around and watch the good scenes haha (i.e. every joker scene)

the movie does drag a bit but by now i know the highlights that i would wanna see in my own special edit of the movie haha

This is exciting but to keep things grounded the first cut of The Town was also 4 hours. My point is that Warner bros are gonna wanna cut it down for the sake of the A.D.D summer audience and to make it neater. Im sure Nolan is gonna run through and find things that drag the film down since his films are notoriously well paced for being so long

I would be satisfied if they were able to cut the movie down to 2hr 30 mins or close to 3hrs.. I mean with this being the finale its somewhat justified for the movie to be long but 4hrs, I’m a huge Batman fan but I probably couldn’t take sitting in a theater for that long

There is a whole lot of backstory to tell in this one I presume with John Blake, Bane, Catwoman & whoever Marion Collitard is. TDK jumped right into the action b/c The Joker didnt need a backstory. Shall be interesting.

I know Nolan hasn’t before but I hope he re-releases a longer (Director) Cut in theatres or DVD at some point.

I’m also thinking it will be close to the previous film’s running time, and, since the previous one was stellar, you’d hardly notice the running time. However, most studios don’t get too nervous around running times. The worst that can happen? Warners asks Nolan if he feel he can’t cut the film down by an hour and a half–

– go Harry Potter/Twilight and break up a massive four hr film in two 2-hr films, just re-edited for a cliffhanger.

Let’s keep in mind, this is only a ROUGH CUT… (just like Whedon’s 3 hour rough cut of the Avengers).
There’s probably quite a lot of editing left – because IMO 4 hours is WAY too long. 3 Hours is still cool, but I would never be able to sit through a 4hr movie (even if there was an intervention).

The thing is… if the rough cut was 4 hours long, and the final, theatrical cut is going to be about 3 hours long (which is probably the maximum run-time we’re going to get in this day and age), that means there’ll be more than an hour of footage cut from the movie, just lying there on the editing floor… quite worrisome indeed.

So I’m thinking we will end up getting a film that’s between 2:45 and 3:00 hours long. That’s fine bye me. But if the studio ends up having any say it won’t be longer than that. There are plenty of people that won’t sit in a theater that long and that also cuts down on how many times they can show it within a day.
And that affects the bottom line.

if it did happen to end up four hours in theaters. which i know it wont but if, they should have an intermission like at the mid act climax or somewhere in the middle. have the intermission last like 10 or 15 minutes to give people time to stretch, go to the bathroom and get more popcorn. i wouldnt mind that. except for the fact that i might lose my seat when i come back